Moto G6

The beloved G-series from Motorola has been evolving over the years, and has sustained at a reputable position in the overcrowded sub 15K price segment in India.   

With the G-series, Moto has always aimed to bring features you'd usually expect on a costlier phone at affordable prices. Especially, with the recently launched Moto G6, you might get a taste of top-end features without spending a fortune. 

With the G6, the G-series introduces 18:9 aspect ratio display, a dual camera, fast charging with a premium design and build.

This composition sounds like a perfect handset for those who prefer good-looking and a feature packed phones at the best possible price. Is it really true to what it's made to do? We'll find out in the review. 

 Moto G6 release date and price 

• The Moto G6 comes in two RAM variants with Rs 2000 price difference. 
• Starts at Rs 13,999

The Moto G6 3GB+32GB has been priced at Rs. 13,999 and 4GB+64GB variant costs Rs 15,999. It will be available in Black and Deep Indigo colour options exclusively on Amazon India and at Moto Hubs starting at Rs. 13,999 from June 5.

Moto G6 design and display 

• Features a bright and clear Full HD+ 5.7-inch LCD display
• More premium design than previous Moto G products
• 3D glass back design with rounded edges

In contrast to last year's model, the Moto G6 is a huge upgrade in terms of design. It gets the same looks that we saw on the Moto X4. In fact, is gets even better with the 18:9 aspect ratio display. 

The display is 5.7-inches in size and has a full HD+ (2160 x 1080 pixel) resolution. As mentioned, it gets the 18:9 treatment, making it slightly elongated and immersive without increasing the size of the phone.

The display doesn't look like the one on flagship phones, or even some of the good mid-range phones, but it's still good considering the price it comes at. Otherwise, the display is bright, crisp and has good viewing angles. 

I did struggle to see the screen in bright sunlight, which can be a disadvantage of IPS LCD screens compared to AMOLED displays.

Coming to the body, the G6 is made with 3D glass, so the back looks shiny and premium, but it's prone to fingerprints like other glass back phones.

I’ve been using the Deep Indigo version of the Moto G6 for this review, but there is also a black colour option.

There's an aluminum frame surrounding the sides, which perhaps is the cheapest looking element in design.  into the skin. It's very close to what we've seen on the Samsung Galaxy S7. 

There's an aluminium frame surrounding the sides, which perhaps is the cheapest looking element in design. 

Motorola says the G6 is splash-proof, but it hasn't yet revealed the phone's IP rating, so you'll want to take care around water as it won’t survive being fully submerged.

It gets a mid-range treatment with the USB Type-C port for data syncing and charging. It's accompanied by a 3.5mm audio jack at the bottom. 

Motorola has also kept the fingerprint sensor on the front of the phone, just below the display, which takes up a little space, so the bottom bezel isn't the thinnest I've seen so far. But many users with front placed fingerprint sensor would appreciate this fact.

Battery life

• Features a 3000mAh cell inside with fast charging
• No wireless charging despite glass back on phone

Moto G-series were never battery-focused phones, but it always delivered decent juice for day long use. In fact, Moto has introduced a bigger 4000mAh cell on the G6 Play for those who prefer a high capacity battery. 

That said, it still offers a full day of usage from single charge with mild usage. When I put it though aggressive usage, it lasted for around 7 hours without needing a charge. So even with basic usage, you will need to charge it overnight.

I ran a video battery test on the phone where I played a video at maximum brightness for 90 minutes and it came out the other side with 79% of its battery leftover. That's not as good as the Moto G5S that lost 16% of its battery, but it is better than the Moto G5 that lost 22%.

Charging is simple through the USB-C cable at the bottom of the phone and there’s also Motorola’s Turbo Charging feature too. That means if you use the bundled charging brick you’ll get 2-3 hours of backup with only half an hour’s charge.

Moto has done a great job of bundling the Turbo charger in the box, which is quite rare for phones of this range. 

Camera 

• Dual sensor camera with 12MP and 5MP on the rear
• 5MP shooter is used for depth sensing for Portait mode
• Front facing 8MP shooter

 Although, it can hold up pretty well against similarly priced handsets. The camera on Moto G6 isn't the best I've seen in this price segment.

It has a dual camera setup with a 12MP sensor working with a 5MP secondary sensor. 

Photos clicked using auto mode look good for social media platforms. But I noticed it getting a little slow while taking a photo. Otherwise, it does a good job at shooting static objects with a calm pair of hands. 

The 12MP sensor has an aperture of f/1.8, while the 5MP secondary sensor is f/2.2. The second sensor only becomes useful when you’re using the phone’s Portrait mode.

It would be unfair to expect this to be as impressive as the portrait modes on the iPhone X or the Pixel 2, but as an extra camera feature to play with it’s a commendable addition.

As many of you must know, the portrait mode allows you to focus on foreground and blur the background. It allows selective blur, which means you can select the impact of the effect. 

You need to take the photo first, then edit it later with a tool called depth editor.

I faced one issue with the portrait mode at times. It did not focus where I wanted it to, and went on to intelligently focus on subjects it thinks you're trying to shoot. So you end up tapping the main subject until it understands what you want shoot.  

The portraits weren't of the best quality in most cases. Don't expect much here, but you can still play around to get some good looking shots at times. In short, this isn't the feature you should buy this phone for. 

It has a Blippar-like object recognition feature, that allows you to take photos of objects or places and get information about them. It's Moto's version of Bixby, but it's not as efficient in this case. It does work, but I feel Moto still has a lot of work to do here.

Our UK team tried it with this Pikachu balloon you can see below and it got it spot on recognising it was a Pokemon character called Pikachu and also a balloon version of the character.

On the front of the Moto G6 is a 8MP selfie camera, which I’ve found to be fine for taking shots of faces, but again there’s nothing here that's going to blow you away. There is a filters mode, which overlays Snapchat-like filters such as cat features or bunny ears on your mug, but this is a temperamental feature at the moment, and it takes a long time to process images.

There isn’t a wide-angle lens on the front of the Moto G6, but if you want to fit a group of friends into a selfie there is a way here. It’s called Group Selfie, and works in a similar way to the panorama mode on most phones.

You can record up to 1080p video on the rear camera, and the footage looks just about average.

One feature I did enjoy is the ability to capture slow-motion footage. It’s a basic version of the slow-mo feature I’ve seen on other phones, such as the Xperia XZ2, which can record at 120fps, but while the frame rate is only 60fps here the footage looks good.

Camera samples

Interface and reliability

• Android 8 Oreo software that looks similar to Google's intended look
• Moto Actions gives you some easy shortcuts to features like the torch

One of the best things about Moto phones is their stock Android experience. It runs the latest version of Android 8 Oreo with slight Moto customisations on top. Moto isn't among OEMs that bloats the UI with tons of apps and features. Instead, most of the features added on top are useful and do make operating the phone easy. There's no clutter of unwanted apps, and even the icon pack is same as stock. 

 The extras include Motorola’s own Moto app, which brings with it a few features you won’t get from other manufacturers.

This app helps you with the storage and battery management by suggesting best ways to optimise phone's performance. The feature works pretty well, it helps save a lot of space by removing duplicate files and junk from the phone.

The app also enables you to set up Moto Actions, which are motions that act as shortcuts to various functions. I've always been a lover of these actions, one of the best features Moto has been putting in their phones from years. 

One of them is the karate chop motion, which turns on the flash if you do it twice. Then there's a twist to turn camera action that turns on the camera and also switches between front and rear snappers.

There are more gesture enabled features like pick up to silent a call or turning your phone over to put it into ‘do not disturb’ mode.

All of these are useful, but again you do need to remember that they’re there, and set them up, to be able to make use of them.

Within the Moto app you can also turn on a feature called ‘One-button nav’, which will give you a bit of extra screen space as it eliminates the need for the navigation buttons that appear along the bottom of the display.

Instead you can use the fingerprint sensor for navigation, a feature found on older Moto G phones as well. 

Movies, music and gaming

• Good audio performance considering the price of the phone
• There's a 3.5mm headphone jack
• Acceptable gaming performance

The Moto G6 is neither build to offer amazing audio or video quality, but it won't disappoint, especially for its price. I used the 3.5mm jack and the loudspeaker too, and did not find anything extraordinary to be happy about. It's pretty average, nothing special here. 

There’s an app on the phone called Dolby Audio, which enables you to set up and tinker with sound profiles for different media on your phone. You can create film, music, game and audio profiles, as well as two custom ones.

I did use the music mode on this. It offers preset settings for equaliser, but you'll hardly end up using them unless you are an audiophile or using a good set of headphones.

The loudspeaker on the G6 is quite powerful though. It's not as powerful as you'd find on HTC or Sony's but, still better than it's counterparts.

I've already mentioned that the display is crisp and gives an immersive video viewing experience. The brightness isn't very high, but it's not going to be a hurdle in movie watching experience. But yes, you might struggle watching under bright sun, which is quite normal. 

For gaming, I won't suggest you to buy this if you're particularly interested in graphic-heavy mobile games. It does run basic games well, or even the Asphalt 8 if you consider it a benchmark. But when it comes to games like graphic-intensive online multiplayer titles like PUBG, it does has its shortcomings. 

Performance and benchmarks

• Features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chipset with 3GB of RAM too
• 32GB of storage in main option, but there's also a 64GB variant

Over 15 days of testing the Moto G6, I figured that he Moto G6 is quite a performer for its price. When I first looked at the Snapdragon 450 chipset, my expectations weren't sky-scraping. 

As mentioned, it is running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chipset, which impressed us on the Xiaomi Redmi 5 earlier this year, and it punches above its weight in a similar way here. 

On Geekbench 4 the Moto G6 returned a multi-core score of 3,807. That's much better than the Moto G5S, which scored 2,294 in the same test last year, although it falls short of the Moto G5S Plus, which scored 4,312.

For basic usage, I didn't find it to be struggling at any point of time yet. It launches apps quickly, switching between apps is smooth, and multitasking isn't limited to just 5-6 apps. I managed to work seamlessly with more than 10 apps open at one point of time.

if your'e switching from a flagship phone to Moto G6, you might find some popular apps taking longer than usual to launch, but the difference isn't frustrating. 

For those who prefer speed and power over design, the Redmi Note 5 Pro is an option that brings way more power to the table at exactly the same price. It runs a Snapdragon 636, and offers 4GB of RAM on the base variant. Also, if you think Snapdragon 450 is good for your need and you can compromise on the extras that the Moto G6 offers, you can consider the cheaper Redmi 5 as well. 

Verdict

The Moto G6, just like it's predecessors, brings the design and features from a mid-range phone to sub-15K. Individually, the phone is a perfect balance of beauty and power at this price, but the competition offers a rather high-specced device at the same price point. So, if power is only what you need, you can check out either the Redmi Note 5 Pro or the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1.

Nevertheless, the Moto G6 has some key advantages over them and it matters to many. You should buy it if you like flaunting your phone, it undoubtedly looks much more premium for its price and only Honor 9 Lite has something to compete here. On top of that, the Moto exclusive features do play a part in making it an interesting buy. Stock Android loyalists can get a smooth Oreo experience, and a guarantee to the next update. 

Lastly, small elements like a USB Type-C port, Turbo Charger and Splashproof body make it an option worth considering.